Sunday, March 13, 2011

Welcoming A Baby - Part 1

Since last Saturday night, March 5th, I've had lots of contractions. Annoying small ones, not a big enough deal to bring forth a baby, but big enough to keep a girl awake when she has to get up to pee (frequently) during the night. Then Wednesday night (the 9th) came around. The contractions that night were more than annoying. Stronger. Some closer together. AND I wasn't able to get much sleep at all. They totally DID get my hopes up about having the baby before Jess would have to go to work so that Ria would get her birthday wish of having Daddy home for the whole day of her birthday. No such luck, obviously. Thankfully, though, Jessie was home until around 1pm that day. We had cake with him before he had to leave. And Ria was quite happy with that, thankfully. The rest of the day was totally lazy for the girls and me. I did reading class with Kat and Ria did practice piano, but that's all of our "productivity" for that day!

Thursday night I had more contractions, but I slept MUCH better.

Tonight (Friday the 11th)... I went to do my night routine before actually going to sleep. As I was settling my mind to allow myself to fall asleep, a really intense contraction 'hit' and I immediately felt super hopeful and excited. That was around 10:40pm. The contractions continued pretty well - though about every 10-20 minutes apart, or so, until a few minutes before midnight. They moved to ever 7 and then ever 5 minutes apart right before midwife and they were intense enough that I called Jess at 12:14am to tell him to come home because I felt the frequency and consistency of the contractions increase so dramatically in time and intensity. He told me he would be leaving in a couple minutes. I responded, "Now. Come home now." He asked if labor had started. I told him I wasn't absolutely sure, but I needed him home, not an hour away.

When Jess got home, he promptly fell asleep. For anyone that knows Jessie, this will NOT be a surprise at all. For anyone who knows me, you may be surprised to learn that I wasn't bothered at all. I was just so very GLAD and thankfuly to have him HERE, rather than a phone call and hour's drive away! I got up from trying to sleep around 2am. I spent some time on the computer and had REALLY consistent and nicely intense contractions, until a bit after 4am. But then they started to go from every 5 minutes to every 9-10 minutes. That was frustrating and upsetting, given my history of "late" babies and natural inductions for all 3 of my girls.

The contractions did not go away. I did lie down and was able to doze between contractions from about 4am until 5am when they became intense again and closer together... More importantly, I experienced 2 episodes of uncontrollable shaking. In a couple of my labor experiences this has been a clear indication that I was approaching or IN transition. So, I called my midwife to come check me.